Thermal filtering of daily and annual temperature oscillations (${\delta }_Y/{\delta }_D=\sqrt{{\omega }_D/{\omega }_Y}$)

The thermal penetration depth of a harmonic ground temperature disturbance scales as the inverse square root of its angular frequency. For yearly and daily forcing, a 365-day year gives ${\delta }_Y/{\delta }_D=\sqrt{365}\simeq 19.1$. At ten daily penetration depths the daily component is attenuated by $e^{-10}$, whereas the annual one retains about $59.2\%$ of its surface amplitude. At ten annual penetration depths, even the annual component is attenuated by $e^{-10}$. These are consequences of the linear thermal diffusion wave model, with homogeneous constant thermal diffusivity.